Jimmy Winokur's

All-Time Favorite Movies

thru  2009, BUT WITH MANY RECENT EXCEPTIONS

(Films are listed in approximate order of preference and personal impact.)

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FILMS:
Very Honorable Mention
Other Favorites
actors


= memorable music               

Music Pages:
FAVORITE MUSICIANS
My  COMPOSITIONS
F
avorite Quotations: Song Lyrics

 

 
Telluride Film Festival Flags Fly at "The Max"
 Photo by Jimmy Winokur All Rights Reserved

 

All-Time Top Twenty-Two Films

 



 

1.                  The Deer Hunter (1978), Michael Cimino, Robert DeNiro, John Cazale, Christopher Walken, John Savage, Meryl Streep. (Cavatina: Stanley Myers)

 

2.                Midnight Cowboy (1969), John Schlesinger, Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight, Sylvia Miles, Barnard Hughes, Brenda Vaccaro.

 

 

 

3.                 The Chosen (1978), Jeremy Paul Kagan, Robby Benson, Rod Steiger, Maximillian Schell (Music: Elmer Bernstein).

 

4.                Moonstruck (1987), Norman Jewison, Cher, Nicolas Cage, Olivia Dukakis, Vincent Gardenia, Danny Aiello.

 

                                        

5.    CRASH (2004), Paul Haggis  Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon, Terrence Howard, Michael Pena, Chris 'Ludacris' Bridges, Larenz Tate, Jennifer Esposito, William Fichtner,  Brendan Fraser  Sandra Bullock, Ryan Phillipe, Thandie Newton, Tony Danza, Loretta Devine. (Score: ♪  Mark Isham)
 

                               
 

6.                 East of Eden (1955), Elia Kazan, James Dean, Jo Van Fleet, Julie Harris, Raymond Massey, Burl Ives. (score: Leonard Rosenman)

 

"They didn't like the cast. They didn't like the way I was shooting it.
I was always on the verge of getting fired."

Francis Ford Coppola, on the shooting of The Godfather

7.                The Godfather (Parts I and II) (1972, 1974) Francis Ford Coppola, Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Richard Castellano, Diane Keaton, Talia Shire, Robert Duvall, Sterling Hayden, John Marley, Richard Conte,    Al Lettleri, Lee Strassberg, Michael Gazzo. (Score:  NinoRota)
           

8.                Rebel Without a Cause (1955), Nicholas Ray, James Dean, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, Jim Backus, Ann Doran, Corey Allen, Edward Platt, Dennis Hopper, Nick Adams. (score: Leonard Rosenman)

9.           Age of Innocence (1993), Martin Scorcese, Juliette Binoche, Daniel Day-Lewis, Joanne Woodward (narrator). (score: Elmer Bernstein)

 

10.              Silence of the Lambs (1991), Jonathon Demme, Jodi Foster, Anthony Hopkins, Scott Glenn, Ted Levine, Tracy Walter, Charles Napier, Roger Corman. (film score: Howard Shore)

 

11.            Shine (1996), Scott Hicks, Geoffrey Rush, Alex Rafalowicz, Noah Taylor, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Lynn Redgrave, John Gielgud, David Helfgott. (score: David Hirschfelder; Sergei Rachmaninoff)

 

12.             One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest (1975), Milos Forman, Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher, Will Simpson, Danny DeVito, Christopher Lloyd, Scatman Crothers, Brad Dourif.

 

13.            The Conversation (1974), Frances Ford Coppolla, Gene Hackman, John Cazale, Allen Garfield, Cindy Williams, Harrison Ford.


 

 

14.             Cinema Paradiso  (1989), Giusseppe Tornatore, Phillipe Noiret, Jacques Perrin, Salvatore Cascio, Marco Leonardi (Score: ♪  Ennio Morricone).
 

 

15.            Dr. Zhivago  (1965), David Lean, Omar Sharif, Julie Christie, Geraldine Chaplin, Rod Steiger, Alec Guinness, Tom Courtenay (Music: Maurice Jarre).

 

 

 

16.            Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Sidney Lumet, Al Pacino, John Cazale, Charles Durning, Carole Kane.

 

17.       Schindler's List  (1993), Stephen Speilberg, Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley, Ralph Fiennes, Caroline Goodall, Jonathan Sagalle, Embeth Davidtz (Score: John Williams).

 

                       

18.     THE TWO POPES (2019), Fernando Meirelles, Anthony McCarten, Jonathon Pryce, Anthony Hopkins, Luis Gnecco.

 

19.            All That Jazz (1979), Bob Fosse, Roy Scheider, Ann Reinking, Ben Vereen, Jessica Lange (as Death), Leland Palmer, Cliff Gorman, Erzsebet Foldi, Sandahl Bergman, John Lithgow (Sore: Bob Fosse)

 


20.    SABRINA (1954), Billy Wilder, Audrey Hepburn, William Holden, Humphrey Bogart, John Williams.

 


21.  THE PROFESSIONAL (also released as LEON ) (1994) Luc Besson, Jean Reno, Natalie Portman, Gary Oldman, Michael Badalucco.  (score: ♪  Eric Serra)

 

22.    BODY HEAT (1981), Lawrence Kasdan, William Hurt, Kathleen Turner, Mickey Rourke, Richard Crenna, Ted Danson.

  

23.    MAGNOLIA  (1999), Paul Thomas Anderson, Earl Partridge: Jason Robards, Julianne Moore, Tom Cruise, Philip Seymour Hoffman, John C. Reilly, William H. Macy, Philip Baker Hall (Score: Jon Brion

 


 

 


Outside the Sheridan, Telluride Film Festival, 2001
Photo by Jimmy Winokur, All Rights Reserved

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‘Very Honorable Mention’

 



 

 


 


                  

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Does the moving picture give us something original,
 something which endows it with a singular quality? 
Or is film only a mixture of other art forms, making use of their values? 
Finally I realised that film does have one singular quality 
that no other art form can supply. 

The moving picture is capable of showing us a living human face in close-up: this ability is the source of its special energy.  Film is capable of showing the birth of an emotion or a thought and its changing -- mirrored in the expression:  how love turns into jealousy, how a newly born thought is mirrored in the eyes.  Only the moving picture can show life's beautiful changes, the constant movement of the human expression in the most intimate moment, in the moment of its birth.

                                                                                        István Szabó, Budapest,2004                      
 

  
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

 

 

 


 

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Other All-Time Favorite Films

 


 

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Favorite Actors

Meryl Streep



 

Philip Seymour hoffman
James Dean
 Audrey Hepburn
Shirley MacLaine
Robert De Niro
edward norton

Henry Fonda
James Stewart
Michelle Pfeiffer

Al Pacino
MORGAN FREEMAN



William Hurt
Jennifer Jason-Leigh
 Gerard Depardieu
Sean Penn
Robert Duvall
Vanessa Redgrave
Cate Blanchett
Robin Williams
Holly Hunter
Juliette Binoche
Sally Field
Denzel Washington
Don Cheadle
John Cazale
Julie Harris
Natalie Portman
Gary Sinise
Cary Grant
Shirley MacLaine
Chris Cooper
Joe Mantegna
Anthony Hopkins


Renee' Zellweger
Daniel Auteuil
John Cusack
Mary Tyler Moore
Jeremy Irons
Danny Glover
Susan Sarandon
Johnny Depp
Ray Milland
Peter MacNicol
Richard Pryor
Ray Walston
 

 Meg Ryan
Gwynneth Paltrow
Julia Ormond
Lena Olin
Emmanuelle Béart
Emily Watson
 

Composers:

Mark Knopfler
Ennio Morricone
Elmer Bernstein
Mark Isham
Clint Eastwood
Jan A. P. Kaczmarek
Zbigniew Preisner
John Williams
Henry Mancini
Maurice Jarre
Claude Lelouch
Rachel Portman
Nino Rota

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